Stoic recently released a new status update for the company's upcoming strategy role playing adventure game, The Banner Saga. The update offers details about the game's various systems and its current state of development. The Banner Saga will combine elements of turn based strategy, role playing, and adventure games, and will follow the exploits of a band of vikings.

As you may have heard, Factions is out. We’ve finished all the combat upgrades which you can try in the game (we’ve also decreased the “grind” quite a bit based on feedback we got). This means that every character ability ranks up and becomes more powerful, which was the last combat system we needed for single player combat.

To mention it again, everything we did for Factions is for the single player. Even the intro cinematic in Factions is actually the intro to the single player game, and the combat boards in Factions are key fights in the single player campaign. We're using all parts of the buffalo, so to speak.

During this time we’ve finished final design work on all our systems. With this documentation finished, implementation has begun.

Here’s a recap: The Banner Saga has three primary gameplay systems: combat, conversation and travel. You switch between these to advance the story. Conversation tracks your decisions and advances the plot, travel is a combination of Oregon Trail and King of Dragon Pass, moving the story forward while creating events related to what you’re doing. Travel also accounts for exploring towns, just like how you see Strand in Factions. The turn-based combat occurs when conflicts arise. Each of these systems feeds into the others.